Article/Document:

Aleksandr Plaksin's Soviet UFO Research

Paul Stonehill

Summary: Aleksandr Plaksin is a military geophysicist. He is an
interesting individual in Soviet UFO history; he played a
prominent role in the secret research conducted by the Soviet
military.

Nick Subbotin sent me a Russian-language article through the
RUFORS mailing List. It was published in Komsomol'skaya Prvada
newspaper on 5-31-02.

Aleksandr Plaksin is a military geophysicist. He is an
interesting individual in Soviet UFO history; he played a
prominent role in the secret research conducted by the Soviet
military.

The new book about Russian Ufology, I co-authored with Philip
Mantle, contains more information about Plaksin and the Soviet
UFO research programs.

In his article Plaksin "reveals" several interesting
developments:

1. Many recent achievements of the American military-industrial
complex have been generated in the labs dedicated to the
research of paranormal phenomena.

2. 'Aliens' have nothing to do with American advanced technology
(i.e., Stealth).

3. In his 15 years of UFO research A. Plaksin had never obtained
direct proof that there are alien civilizations active on our
planet.

4. Americans have researched UFOs since 1954 (U.S. Air Force),
and since 1974 they have operated a secret scientific research
center to study anomalous phenomena and UFOs through the use of
a special Earth-based station. Hence, they (the Americans) were
able to create a superweapon. (A. Plaksin goes into scary
detaisl, but basically his aim is to denigrate American HAARP,
future U.S. policies, etc.)

5. A. Plaksin describes the creation of the Soviet program(s) to
study the anomalous phenomena from 1978 on. Good stuff; we have
gone into great detail in our book to describe such programs,
and have more information. But A. Plaksin was definitely one of
the key people, albeit, not the top brass.

6. A. Plaksin goes into fascinating details; the information
after all, came from Soviet military branches, the Navy, the
border guards, tanti-aircraft units, etc. Some of such cases I
described in The Soviet UFO Files (1998).

I was glad to find in his interview in Komsomol'skaya Pravda
fascinating details of a sighting from the Borisoglebsk airfield
(the immobile black cloud). The area itelf is very interesting,
and in our book, we dedicated some pages to the strane goings-on
there; the "cloud", too, is of great interest; there have been
other very strange "clouds" over the former USSR and Russia.

7. A. Plaksin mentions the infamous and very dangerous 1982 case
(and gives the correct date; Mr. Sokolov who has changed his
story repeatedly, ought to be ashamed. It was the 4th of
Octiber, not the 5th; and nothing but UFO almost triggerred a
nuclear war).

8. A. Plaksin states that there were no UFO crash in Kazakhstan
in 1978; no secret storage for UFO fragments in Mitische (Moscow
area), no supersecret storage in Novaya Zemlya..

Again, we should listen to him, and compare his information to
that provided by such respectable former Soviet military
officers as Gherman Kolchin, Lev Ovsicher, and others. Messers
Gershtein, Subbotin, Chernobrov should also be heard, for their
research skills are diverse and vast.

9. A. Plaksin is of the opinion that the unidentified objects
("20 percent", acc. to him) are of physical origin that is still
inknown to us. Our laws of physics cannot explain such objects.
He mentions two fascinating episodes (1977 and 1981).

10. Although A. Plaksin states that most likely there are no
aliens on Earth, he also mentions that because of military
secrecy he cannot reveal everything he knows.

I recently discussed A. Plaksin in a TV interview. Obviously, he
is revealing more information, piecemeal. There is more to be
learned from him, I hope, in the future. But again, he was but
one of the players.